Education Week - April 28, 2021 - 6

Gifted Education Comes
Up Short for Low-Income
And Black Students

Changing Numbers of Schools With Gifted Programs
A new study in the Journal of Advanced Academics finds the
number of schools offering gifted education programs declined
overall from 2012-2016, but it rose in the highest poverty schools.
However, there continue to be racial disparities in enrollment in
these programs.
POVERTY:

2 --

High
Middle

It's not enough for schools to provide more opportunities for talented
low-income students and students of
color to enter existing gifted education programs, new research suggests.
The programs have to serve those students well, too.
While the typical gifted education
services give a small boost to students'
reading performance on average-and
a minimal bump for math-those benefits accrue most to high-income and
white students, according to the research released at the American Educational Research Association conference earlier this month.
" We've been talking a lot about issues of representation and access-
how do we fix the systems that are
essentially giving very little access to
students of color or low-income students for these programs-and thinking so with the assumption that if we
can get people across the threshold
and into the program, then they'll realize all of these benefits, " said Jason
Grissom, a professor of public policy
and education at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College and faculty
director of the Tennessee Education
Research Alliance. He co-wrote the

Ohio State University and Adam Tyner
of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
found that from 2012-2016, during the
time of Grissom's study, the percentage
of schools with gifted programs nationwide declined overall, but the percentage in high-poverty schools actually
rose slightly, from 67.9 percent to 68.1
percent. However, students in wealthier
schools remained more than twice as
likely to actually enroll in gifted education-12.7 percent of them participated,
compared to 5.8 percent of students in
high-poverty schools as of 2016.
Black students make up shrinking
share of gifted programs

Tyner and Yaluma also found that
Black and Hispanic students were
consistently underrepresented in
gifted education, both nationwide
and in high-poverty schools. In fact,
from 2012 to 2016, the percentage of
Black students in gifted programs fell
4.2 percent in high poverty schools
and 5.1 percent overall, to make up
less than 10 percent of all gifted students and less than 5 percent of gifted
students in high-poverty schools.
" There's just a lot of variation, not
just in identification strategies but
also in programming, " Grissom said.

Low

Percent change from 2012 Baseline (%)

By Sarah D. Sparks

study with Christopher Redding, an
assistant education professor at the
University of Florida.
" From a policy point of view, if
you're taking it from the 20,000-foot
view, I think this is raising questions
about what's happening with the typical gifted services approach, though
there are lots of individual programs
out there with positive evidence, "
Grissom said. " So now we show that
maybe also, we need to think about
what's happening in how students are
being served once they're in the door. "
Grissom and Redding used federal
data to track a nationally representative sample of more than 18,000 gifted
students who began kindergarten in
the 2010-2011 school year through
their 5th grade year. They used teacher
reports to identify when academically talented students received gifted
education services in reading, math,
or other areas, and compared both
their academic progress and their attendance and engagement in school
in those years, to the years the same
students did not participate.
The new findings come at a time
when gifted services appear to be declining. In a separate study published
this spring in the Journal of Advanced
Academics, Christopher Yaluma of

0.3%

0 --

-1.4%
-2 --

-4 --

-3.8%
2012

2014

2016

Year

" From state to state and district to
district, ... you could have this mix of
strategies where there are pull-out
classes; there's enrichment that's provided within the general education setting where kids are in the same classes
but they're getting differential assignments; before-school and after-school
programs. And then, you have more
radical treatments like whole schools
for advanced students. ... It often
makes it hard to draw out generalities. "
While students who qualified for

gifted programs already performed
on average 85 percent of a standard
deviation higher than average on test
scores in years they did not participate,
Grissom and Redding found participating in the programs gave them only
a minor boost. A gifted student who
scored at the 78th percentile in a year
she did not participate in gifted programs would score at the 80th in the
year she did participate, for example-
which is, for comparison, a smaller
benefit than that seen for allowing

WHAT THE

RESEARCH SAYS

'High-surveillance' schools
lead to more suspensions,
lower achievement
By Sarah D. Sparks
As school shootings crop up once again on school campuses
this spring, school leaders may be tempted to tighten security
and surveillance measures as they reopen after months of
remote instruction.
But new research suggests schools that tighten security and
surveillance in response to shootings or other acts of violence
may worsen long-term discipline disparities and academic
progress, particularly for Black students.
Schools that maintain the closest watch on students
have significantly higher suspension rates and lower math
performance than schools that use a lighter touch, according
to new research released at the annual American Educational
Research Association conference earlier this month. The
findings also suggest a high-surveillance culture at school
can make it harder for educators to implement strategies like
restorative justice intended to reduce discipline disparities
for students of color.ble outcomes for all students. "
Jason Jabbari, a data analyst for the Social Policy Institute
at Washington University in St. Louis, and Odis Johnson, an

6 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 28, 2021 | www.edweek.org

education professor and the executive director of Johns Hopkins
University's Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, used federal
longitudinal data to look at surveillance and its effects on more
than 16,000 students in 750 high schools nationwide.
In the schools studied, surveillance took many forms,
including: structural, such as having security cameras and
metal detectors; random drug tests, wand sweeps, and dog
sniffs for contraband; and barring students from leaving
campus for lunch. But researchers also noted schools with
strict dress codes or uniforms, those that required clear book
bags, and identification badges for students and staff.
Based on those practices, researchers divided the pool
of schools into thirds. A 10th grader who attended one of
the third of schools with the highest levels of surveillance
was significantly more likely to be suspended at least once
by the end of high school and had significantly lower math
achievement test scores by 12th grade than a peer in one of
the least-controlling third of schools. Moreover, students who
graduated from these schools where security sweeps and metal
detectors were common, proved significantly less likely to
enroll and persist in college than were students in schools with
lower levels of surveillance.
The findings build on more than a decade of research
suggesting school climate can suffer and students tend to feel
less safe in schools with highly visible surveillance, such as
metal detectors.
" A lot of these social control mechanisms don't have a
clear problem that they're trying to address, or it's a nebulous

problem, like school shootings, which are extremely rare.
They're not put in place because of a specific incident, but
because of general fears, and whether or not they even address
those fears is unclear, " said Samantha Viano, an assistant
professor of education at George Mason University, who
studies school discipline but who was not part of the study. The
study's findings raise questions, she said, about " how do you
change the attitude of what schools should look like? ... These
security mechanisms are just more about control than about
creating the kind of atmosphere that we want for students. "
Greater burden falls on Black students

And these consequences fell disproportionately on Black
students, who were more than four times more likely than white
students to attend a school with the highest level of surveillance.
Those findings align with previous research. One landmark
study, using restricted federal data on school security measures
released after school shootings in Sandy Hook, Conn., found
that the movement toward highly intensive school security and
surveillance was driven by high-profile shootings like Sandy
Hook and another in Columbine High School in Colorado 22
years ago last week, which took place in mostly white suburban
schools. However, the study found schools that served mostly
students of color have been more likely than suburban schools
to use the most intensive security measures in response to the
school-security push.
Across all kinds of schools, but particularly in the most

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Education Week - April 28, 2021

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